My name is:

Anna Rahe. 

I live in:

Boulder, Colorado.

I’m known for being: 

A teacher and healer who can help with confusing, stubborn or complicated body and health issues. I tend to be the “last stop” in people’s long journey to finding answers and solutions for their body, mind and soul struggles.   

I’m talking about: 

GST (or Gridflow Somatic Technology), a proprietary system with biotechnology for manipulating fascia. GST uses motion + new biomechanics + GST fascia flux to remodel tissue and heal, condition and revitalize your body.

GST Body redefines health and wellness from the inside out, introducing an entirely new concept: whole body care where you learn to be your own practitioner and influence your total body health. All systems, in ways previously inaccessible through diet and exercise alone. GST gives the collective benefits of chiropractic, deep tissue massage, acupuncture, reiki and organ detoxification all in one deeply satisfying movement bodycare experience.  

Before I started doing this work, I was: 

A student of philosophy at the University of San Francisco operating a Pilates studio in downtown SF.  But I started my journey with fascia at the young age of 18, so I didn’t do a lot of anything professional prior to discovering fascia and developing GST. I did want to be a professional dancer, but my body was so broken, it was a pipe dream. Then I discovered what would become GST and had a dance and acting career.

My interest was sparked when:  

At 18, my body felt like it was 70. I had so much pain and complicated systemic body problems. I was already a Pilates teacher, studied lots of yoga. I had done Rolfing, Structural Integration and Heller Work and nothing really put a dent in my symptoms or offered permanent solutions.

I was exclusively interested in permanently fixing my body. I wanted to feel, look and move completely differently. I wanted a different body. I discovered I could do something with my fascia that was beyond rolling and stretching. It's what became the technology behind GST and why it’s so powerful at changing bodies. 

The idea behind it is: 

First, fascia is important because it is your smart grid. It regulates and modulates all energies in the body from cells, to tissue, to organs and body systems. Fascia takes the high-voltage forces from gravity and our motion and the low-voltage energy of our body systems and modulates these energies to keep a balanced net zero effect (no/low stress) on the body. It is responsible for your whole body synchronicity of all physiological action. For example, fascia is why your heart, with its electrical output (EKG), can reside right next to your lungs with a different energetic output and not have conflict of motion and energetic exchange. When people used to talk about a person's energy, it was “New Age-y,” but, with fascia, it’s very scientific. When your fascia tissues (and energy) are blocked, it leads to stress and disease. 

Second, fascia is important because it is more than tissue. It is a whole body system (the connected tissue system) that is involved in every other body system's functions—endocrine, lymphatic, respiratory, etc. If you take care of fascia, you take care of your whole body, holistically. 

Third, fascia is important because, with special techniques, fascia gives us a way to influence autonomic body functions previously considered inaccessible and uncontrollable. This allows you to make changes to your body, mind and spiritual health that have not been possible before now.

Yeah, fascia (and more importantly the connective tissue system) is a really big deal. 

The way that fascia relates to the face specifically is:

Your fascia is a beautiful honeycomb lattice that builds tensegrity (structure created by balanced tension) organized from bone to the skin’s surface. The integrity of the skin and face is built on fascia structures deep inside the body, especially your torso.  

A lot of the exercise training we do, as well as the emotional stresses we experience in life, compromises fascia suspension in the upper body. For example, developing a solid tight core to have nice abs collapses the chest. And intense workouts (just like life stresses) activate the adrenal response which restricts and torques the diaphragm; this pulls down and collapses suspension. These and many more influences contribute to the signs of age-stress (wrinkles, sagging and asymmetry) we see on our faces. 

With fascia, beauty really is more than skin deep. This is why working deeply with the structure of fascia has better beauty results than just lotions and potions and isolated facial exercises.  

Fascia is integral to our movement and health because:

Movement is the single greatest influence on the health of our fascia, above diet and exercise. Most exercise methods we do use biomechanics (body movements) that are not good for fascia. I’ll save the deep science, but remember I mentioned fascia and energy above? The high-voltage energy that runs through our fascia from our movement is like UVB rays of sunlight that can burn our skin. High-intensity poor biomechanics can “scorch” our tissues and create ossification, a fancy word meaning makes soft tissue more bone-like. Soft tissue shouldn’t be hard, but most fitness methods aim to “tighten and tone.”  

There are better ways to move (GST fluid dynamic biomechanics) that support fascia’s fluid nature. Fascia must be well-hydrated and its fibers soft and individuated for it to do its job and support your whole body function and health.

The words I live by are:

Wisdom I have learned from fascia: Life is full of dynamic tensions that pull and push in on us. Static tension leads to septic states like depression and disease. How well we are able to move (metabolize) tension through the fibers of our body and being determines how open, free, balanced, healthy and vital we are. 

One truth that is so important, but people don’t always realize is:

Fascia literally, not figuratively, is what connects our consciousness to our body and is the continuum connecting ourselves to the world around us. What we learn from working deep inside our tissues translates directly into creating the life we desire to live.